The present invention relates to a material compacting device, and more particularly, is directed to a device for compacting and bundling leaves and grass.
Generally, during spring and fall clean-ups of lawn areas and the like, leaves, grass and other yard materials are collected together by raking the lawn area so as to assemble the materials into discrete piles. Thereafter, the materials are deposited in plastic bags by hand, rake or both. However, such materials are generally of a relatively light weight and are not actually compacted, leaving a great deal of air trapped between the leaves. As a result, a significant amount of wasted space is provided in each bag so that a relatively small amount of leaves and the like are packed in each bag. This is therefore extremely inefficient and requires the use of numerous plastic bags.
Further, such procedure is slow since only a small quantity of leaves is insertible in the open trash bags at one time and the bags do not allow entrapped air to escape. Also, since the plastic bags are not biodegradable, the leaves and other organic materials contained in the bags are not rendered biodegradable, which presents problems to the municipality or other government entity charged with the disposal of such materials.
Accordingly, it is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,629,233 to the same inventor herein to provide a material compacting device which overcomes these deficiencies. Specifically, a leaf directing element has a front funnel section and an open rear conduit. An expanded annular ring or lip is provided at the open rear conduit of the leaf directing element. Accordingly, netting material is held on the open rear conduit by an elastic band, with the opposite closed end of the netting material extending outwardly therefrom. A special plunger-type rake forces the leaves through the enlarged funnel section and out the open rear conduit, into the netting material. Continued compression of leaves therethrough forces the netting material to be slowly pulled outwardly in order to contain more compacted leaves. When sufficient compacted leaves have been inserted in the netting material for the particular purpose, the netting material at the rear conduit is cut and tied.
However, it has been found from practical usage that various problems may result with this arrangement. Specifically, in order to maintain the netting material on the rear conduit, the aforementioned annular ring provides a barrier against which the elastic band abuts when the netting material is pulled outwardly so as to provide a resistive force for the above mentioned compression and thereby to permit the netting material to pull outwardly in a slow manner. However, it has been found that if sufficient force is applied by the user, the elastic band tends to escape over the annular ring. Once this occurs, there is nothing holding the netting material onto the rear conduit so that compaction of leaves, grass and the like in the netting material will not occur thereafter.
Further, the leaf directing element itself is relatively bulky to store during non-use periods. As discussed above, primary usage of the material compacting device of this Patent will occur during spring and fall clean-up operations on lawn areas. During the remaining periods of the year, the material compacting device is not in use and is relatively bulky to store. In addition, because of the bulkiness of the product, shipping costs are relatively expensive. Lastly, in order to prevent movement of the leaf directing element during use, an anchor rod or nail is inserted through a hole in the device into the ground so as to temporarily secure the leaf directing element in the ground. Although this anchoring operation can easily occur in soft ground, the device cannot be used in hard ground areas, such as streets, driveways and the like.